


This is what you do for the people you love

by thisisamadhouse



Series: Have we met before? [8]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, the character death is neither Regina or Robin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-01
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-25 15:52:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13838046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisisamadhouse/pseuds/thisisamadhouse
Summary: Denial oneshot about the events of the end of season 5 where it was actually all a very vivid nightmare





	This is what you do for the people you love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lolymoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lolymoon/gifts).



> A fic I posted for Manon's last birthday

Regina startles awake, the cries of an infant ringing in her ears. She sits up in her bed, confused and disoriented. Wasn’t she just at the cemetery, lying on the grass covering Robin’s freshly digged tumb, clutching the arrow Roland had left for her, mourning the loss of her soulmate and his sweet dimpled child?

“I’m sorry, love, but our little one won’t settle down, and I was afraid she would wake the boys. These colics are still bothering her, poor thing.”

It’s  _his_ voice, she knows it is, would recognize it anywhere, but she can’t bring herself to look up, in fear that she is imagining the whole thing.

She must have paled for he trails off and asks in a concerned voice “Are you alright, Regina?”. This time she does turn towards him, wide eyes and slacked jaw. How can he wonder about her well-being when he…

“You’re here,” she whispers, her mouth forming the words, her vocal chords letting out the sound before her brain has completely come to terms with this reality she can’t accept, because it would mean hoping again, and she gave that up when she had to watch Robin’s soul leave his body and fade away from her forever.

He is frowning, worried eyes and creases in his forehead, as he adjusts the fussing baby in his arms, and walks the few steps separating them. He sits on the bed, right beside her, so close that she can feel his body heat, and the last time she held him he was so cold, cold as ice as she shook him and raged and screamed how she hated him for making her believe there was a future, a happy ending to look forward to. She didn’t mean any of it of course, she slumped boneless and exhausted over him when the last particle of energy left her, and then she became withdrawn, internalized everything, presented a blank mask to the crowd of pitying people with their _‘I’m sorry for your loss’_.

Robin is cupping her cheek, his thumb catching a tear she hasn’t even realised started falling. “Regina, what’s going on?”

“I thought you were gone. We were in hell, and then Hades tried to trap us, and he was out to get us and you were gone, just like that, right in front of me…” She tries to organize her thoughts, but it’s a jumble, and he makes this confused face that under any other circumstances she would find adorable.

“You do realise you’re not making any sense right now,” he says and she exhales, nodding.

“It just seemed so real,” she breathes, leaning into his hand.

“But it wasn’t, I’m right here,” he replies, sliding his hand from her cheek to her arm, taking hers and rising them to his heart, letting her feel the steady beats.

She chokes down a sob, leaning forward until her head rests on his shoulder. “I thought it was happening all over again,” she murmurs against his skin.

“It’s going to take more than the God of the Dead to tear me away from you,” he whispers, pressing his lips on her hair.

She gives him a broken chuckle, embracing him, turning her head to the side, and looks down at the baby still giving miserable cries, her little face flushed, waving around her tiny fists.

“Try to turn her on her stomach, it helped with Henry when he suffered from those,” Regina tells Robin, and his eyebrows raise at the abrupt change of subject, but he doesn’t comment. They maneuver the baby onto her belly, her body just long enough to cover Robin’s forearm, and she seems surprised by the change of position, her crying stopping suddenly. She squirms a bit, and then gives into her exhaustion, her little head resting in Robin’s palm, her eyelids fluttering close.

“You don’t know that,” Regina speaks up after a long moment, her index stroking the baby’s back softly.

“What?”

“You don’t know what it would take to tear you away from me. You can’t guarantee that it won’t happen. What I saw, it was like Daniel dying again, because of me. You threw yourself right in front of me, you took the hit that was meant for me. I can’t go through that again,” she tells him, shaking her head.

He sighs. “Regina, there are no guarantees in life, we both learned that a long time ago, and I know for sure that if you were in danger and the price to pay to save you was my life I would gladly give it…”

Regina straightens, clutching his arm, her nails digging into his skin. “You can’t do that, I am not worth Roland and your daughter becoming orphans. You have to swear to never do that.”

Robin shakes his head, a fond smile on his lips. He threads his fingers in her hair and brings her forehead against his. “You are demanding the impossible. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for the people I love, Regina, and you have no idea the depth of the feelings you have awoken in me from the first moment I laid my eyes on you, and every single moment since. You say you can’t go through that, but do you think I would fare any better in a world where you no longer exist?”

Every word he whispers imprints on her skin, onto her very bones, bringing warmth and dread in equal measures. He loves her and he would die for her, she can’t have that, she can’t…

“Stop overthinking this, there is nothing you can do to make me change my mind, it is the way it is. We’ll just have to do our best to never have to come to that,” he insists, cutting into her thoughts.

“Given our track records that’s not going to be an easy task,” she retorts, causing him to smile, dimples on show.

“Easy is boring anyway,” he mutters before kissing her, trying to make her worries vanish, and it works for a while.

The next morning, they stand by Henry and Emma’s sides, watching as Hook’s coffin is being lowered in the ground, and though Regina grieves for the younger woman, for having to lose another person she loved, she can only think about going to her vault and searching through her books for everything she can possibly find about soulmates and their connections. She knows from that strange and intense dream that she would be able to survive Robin’s death, but she never wants to have to, and she will do everything in her quite remarkable amount of power to find a way to protect him should anything happen.


End file.
